The midterm elections are more than a year away, but voters who live in the small towns and rolling farms of Upstate New York are providing an early look at how President Obama's economic policies may play out on the campaign trail in 2010.

Syracuse escaped the sharp highs and lows of the housing boom and bust. The severe downward slide in home sales slammed other cities in 2006 and 2007, but the county seat of Onondaga County didn't see much of a negative sales dip until mid-2008. In part, that's because it never had ballooning home values, says Roger Evans, principal economist at the New York State Department of Labor's Syracuse office. It didn't see a surge in home foreclosures from subprime loans. But now, home sales are down, and Syracuse has a gloomy housing market. "Our biggest issue is consumer confidence," says David Manzano, president of the Syracuse Realtors group.

Utility officials trying to recover from a devastating ice storm warned there could be more outages Sunday as drooping trees and branches shed ice and snap back into their original positions, potentially taking out more power lines.

Critically wounded troops are symbols of a new type of war casualty on this sixth Veterans Day since the United States invaded Iraq. They are wounded troops who probably would have died on the battlefield in conflicts of previous generations, but thanks to advances in emergency medical care by the military, they come home alive. More than a dozen have lingered for months or even years before dying, usually of infection.